![]() ![]() ![]() The hospital was to be the first building erected specifically for the care of abandoned children the first orphanage. It was quickly decided that a new building would be established to house these children. It was one of the richest, most powerful guilds in Florence. The responsibility for all these foundlings, as they were known, was given to the “Arte della Seta,” or Silk Guild. Many were the illegitimate children of servants and enslaved people. People abandoned children because of many factors: illegitimacy, war, famine, plague, and extreme poverty. In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, it was common for unwanted children, especially girls, to be abandoned. Art, science, wealth, architecture, all were in bloom, ruled from behind the scenes by the wealthy Medici family. In many ways, Florence was considered the center of the civilized world in the 1400s. Florence was crawling with abandoned babies. Babies in the fields, babies in the alleyways, babies left on the pews of the Church. Florence in the 1400s had a baby problem. ![]()
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